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Book: “Lucy Undying” by Kiersten White
Publishing Info: Del Rey, September 2024
Where Did We Get This Book: We received ARCs at ALAAC24.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: In this epic and seductive gothic fantasy, a vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love.
Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims. But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire, and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula’s clutches–and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.
Her undead life takes an unexpected turn when, in twenty-first-century London, she meets another woman who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.
Lucy has long believed she would never love again. But she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris, while Iris is mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by forces from without. Iris’s mother won’t let go of her without a fight, and Lucy’s past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl again.
Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?
Kate’s Thoughts
I am going to preface my review with some caveats. The first is that I have genuinely enjoyed all of the books that I have read by Kiersten White. Like, not a clunker in the bunch in my experience. The next is that I have a very, very personal connection to the original story of “Dracula”, as I read it in my all time favorite college class which was taught by my very favorite professor turned friend Andy, who tragically passed away due to a brain tumor far too young, and his analysis and contextualization of the novel made for very rewarding reading. And I really liked the idea of approaching Lucy Westenra, who was basically a character to be a tragic woman victim to drive the men in her life towards justice, to get some more complexity and time to shine. After all, we know that women don’t have to just be victims there for man pain. With these things in mind, I was so, SO anticipating “Lucy Undying”, White’s newest retelling and reimagining of a classical piece of Western literature. My hopes were so high.
And man. I really didn’t like this book.
There are many things that I didn’t like about this book and I don’t want to turn this into a long rant, so I will do my best to keep this brief. What I will say is that I started out liking it for a bit. Some of the set up was promising. But then it fell apart once we got into the nitty gritty. This book is told in multiple perspectives. The first is Iris, a woman living in the modern day who is trying to escape the clutches of the toxic MLM that her family, particularly her now dead mother, has been running and has made them powerful and dangerous. When she arrives in London to try and sort out some property that her family has, she finds the diary of Lucy Westenra, the tragic victim of vampire Dracula (but also almost everyone around her) centuries before. Iris has also met the mysterious ‘Elle’, who is quite obviously vampire Lucy. Along with the present day, we have TWO perspectives from Lucy. The first is her diary from her time shortly before becoming a vampire (which Iris has found), as well as transcripts from therapy sessions that let us know what Lucy was up to AFTER her turning and before now. It’s a hefty amount to juggle, and unfortunately it isn’t juggled very well, feeling meandering and bloated. It’s a lot of telling instead of showing when it comes to Lucy and her exploits, and it makes the pacing lag as we jump between the three. I wish that one had been cut completely to be frank. And then to make matters more convoluted, the tone does a sudden shift later in the book, and it feels like two different novels being combined into one, but shoehorned in in an awkward fashion.
But the most egregious thing to me was how in an effort to bolster Lucy up beyond the admitted victimized waif that she was in the original text BASICALLY EVERY OTHER CHARACTER FROM “DRACULA” has been turned into a devious villain who meant to do her harm. And look, I get the drive to do so. I wholly understand the way that many women were treated during the Victorian era by the men in their lives. I can understand wanting to make The Five Heroes perhaps not as gallant as the original text did, that maybe they were men of their time with all the baggage that comes with it. Hell, I can even perhaps get into the debate of trying to treat a dying Lucy with blood transfusions when she wasn’t REALLY consenting to it (though it sure wasn’t unheard of, and I know this because I once worked in a historic upper class Victorian house in St. Paul that has SO MANY medical horror stories, especially for the women). But making Dr. Seward a psychopath? Making Quincy a total dumb dumb? Making Arthur scheming for more wealth? MAKING VAN HELSING AN ‘OLD PERVERT’?! Hated it. And the biggest sin? Mina is not exempt from this. So what is supposed to be a feminist re-envisioning makes the choice to throw the only other woman from the original text under the bus to make Lucy look better and wronged and scorned and etcetera etcetera. It’s the same lazy trap that that vanity project “Maleficent” fell into, and I HATED that movie and I really disliked this book because of this. I admit that I may be too personally fond of the original story to really give this the fairest of shakes, but this kind of approach almost always sticks in my craw, beloved text or not.
I do have a positive I will share because it’s only fair to do so after this long rant of a review: I absolutely loved the predatory Utah based MLM storyline, Goldaming Life and how Iris and Lucy connect to it. In the author’s note White mentions that she’s writing a book that does more Utah MLM culture deconstruction and oh my GOD I am SO here for that. Though in another moment of ranting, Arthur’s title in “Dracula” was spelled “Godalming”, not “Goldaming”. I think this was just a misspelling as there was no indication that misspelling was intentional. I’m hoping this will be corrected in the final product.
I still intend to keep reading Kiersten White’s books, as overall I still really like her as an author. But I really disliked this book, which was such a disappointment because I had such high hopes for it.
Serena’s Thoughts
If I just type “same” and call it good, would that count for my half of this joint review? But honestly, much of what Kate expressed was my own experience as well. I want to re-emphasize truly how much of a shock this was. Like Kate, I’ve loved every book I’ve read by this author. Sure, I’ve had favorites (I particularly enjoyed her “Vlad the Impaler” trilogy), but none of them have whiffed nearly as badly as this one did. I’m honestly not sure what happened. It could be simply a case of the author having too much tied up in her own head canon regarding Lucy (as she admits in the author’s note in the end), and then the story itself was lost in the shuffle.
I’ve only read “Dracula” once, so I don’t have the same deep ties to the story as Kate does. That being the case, I was happy enough to go along with the reinterpretation of some of these characters. But very quickly, I ran into the exact problem that Kate expressed: the “reinterpretation” was the same for every single character, namely, they were all terrible people in comparison to Lucy. I really lost it, however, when this carried over to Mina. I truly dislike it when authors attempt to write “feminist” re-tellings of classic characters and the way they end up showing this is by demonizing the other women surrounding them. It’s just icky. This was made all the worse for Lucy then being written as your tried-and-true special snowflake who literally inspires every other woman around her and, yes, essentially ends WWI all on her own.
Beyond that, while I think the modern day story was better written, I don’t feel that it fit comfortably alongside Lucy’s own history that was slowly unfurled through diary entries and therapist notes. It also wasn’t helped that, personally, this storyline was simply of less interest to me. I can see that it was better done, but my original draw to this story was in the original “Dracula” time period and characters (I’ll also say that I think the cover is a bit misleading, as it definitely leans towards a more historical/gothic vibe than the large chunks of contemporary horror/thriller storylines that we got here).
Overall, I have to agree with Kate in pretty much every way. This was a disappointing read, all the more so for it coming from an author who has been such a sure thing in the past.
Kate’s Rating 3: A huge misstep from an author I usually quite enjoy, “Lucy Undying” is bloated, convoluted, and relies too much on demonizing other characters in order to bolster Lucy up. Very disappointing.
Serena’s Rating 3: A bizarre missing of the mark from an author who has had great success tackling similar re-tellings in the past.
Reader’s Advisory
“Lucy Undying” is included on the Goodreads lists “Queer Vampire Books” and “The Vampire Renaissance”.
The Library Ladies 